Other PowerShell Development Tools

Other commercial Windows PowerShell editing products that should be available by the time this review is published are Idera's PowerShell Plus 3.1 and Quest Software's PowerGUI Pro MobileShell edition. The latest releases of these products weren't available at the time that this review was written. You can find more information about PowerShell Plus 3.1 at www.idera.com/Products/PowerShell/PowerShell-Plus. You can find more information about PowerGUI Pro MobileShell edition at dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/mobileshell-powershell-prompt-in-a-browser.

In addition, there are a number of very capable free PowerShell editors available on the market. They include Microsoft's new Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), PowerGUI, and Shell Tools' PowerShell Analyzer.

Windows PowerShell ISE
The Windows PowerShell ISE is part of Windows PowerShell 2.0, which was first included with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. In addition, 32-bit and 64-bit versions of PowerShell 2.0 can be downloaded from Microsoft's website (support.microsoft.com/kb/968929) for other Windows OSs. The Windows PowerShell ISE offers a tabbed editing interface with color-coded syntax. It doesn't provide IntelliSense-style code completion or code snippets, but it does provide support for PowerShell debugging.

PowerGUI
PowerGUI was the first popular graphical PowerShell editor. Quest Software originally developed PowerGUI, but the company later released it as freeware. PowerGUI provides a multi-tabbed interface, IntelliSense-style PowerShell prompting, code snippets, and an integrated debugger. I've used PowerGUI for many of my own PowerShell development projects. You can find out more about PowerGUI in the article "Features of PowerGUI Script Editor". You can download PowerGUI from www.powergui.org/downloads.jspa.

Shell Tools' PowerShell Analyzer
Shell Tools' PowerShell Analyzer is a different kind of PowerShell development product. It offers a graphical editing environment and code completion but doesn't provide a graphical debugger. PowerShell Analyzer's set of "vizualizers" let you inspect objects returned from PowerShell commands. You can download PowerShell Analyzer from www.powershellanalyzer.com.